5. Opéra, chamber music, and more songs in the Second Republic
Les Parisiennes - French Women Composers of the Long Nineteenth Century - Diana Ambache
Diana Ambache [+]
Musician and scholar
Diana Ambache was short-listed for the European Women of Achievement Awards (2002) for her pioneering work researching, presenting, broadcasting and recording music by women of the last 250 years; http://www.womenofnote.co.uk/ .
She was the first woman in Britain to found and direct her own classical orchestra, the Ambache Chamber Orchestra; they performed and recorded Mozart Piano Concertos and gave modern premières of works by female composers; http://www.ambache.co.uk/records.htm.
As a pianist she has given concerts, taught and lectured in over 30 countries on five continents. Teaching English as a foreign language has taken her to India, Laos, Myanmar and Peru.
Published in 2021, her first book: The Soul of the Journey is her account of the music and art inspired by the excursions of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn to Scotland and Italy. Cambridge University Press issued her Grażyna Bacewicz, the First Lady of Polish Music in 2022.
She was the first woman in Britain to found and direct her own classical orchestra, the Ambache Chamber Orchestra; they performed and recorded Mozart Piano Concertos and gave modern premières of works by female composers; http://www.ambache.co.uk/records.htm.
As a pianist she has given concerts, taught and lectured in over 30 countries on five continents. Teaching English as a foreign language has taken her to India, Laos, Myanmar and Peru.
Published in 2021, her first book: The Soul of the Journey is her account of the music and art inspired by the excursions of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn to Scotland and Italy. Cambridge University Press issued her Grażyna Bacewicz, the First Lady of Polish Music in 2022.
Description
The success of Farrenc’s Nonet in E flat, op 38, in 1849, brought her equal pay as a Professor at the Paris Conservatoire. She wrote her Violin Sonata in A, op 39, in 1850, and went on to write the first Sextet for piano and wind in 1852. Two Piano Trios followed a couple of years later. There was some rivalry between the opera divas Giulia Grisi and Pauline Viardot (1821-1910). That year Viardot met Gounod in Rome, which led to his composing the opera Sappho for her in 1851.